Dead and Gone by Jack Patterson (universal ebook reader .TXT) 📕

Cal. Pick up your phone,” she said aloud before tossing her phone onto the couch.

She paced around the living room and pondered what other way she might be able to reach him. Never one to assume the worst, she wondered if maybe her deep-seated fears were being realized once again.

As she paced around the room, she glanced out of the window. She’d noticed a car parked along the road in her neighborhood. She wasn’t watching it that closely, but her intermittent glances was enough to tell her it had been there at least three hours without moving. While she couldn’t be certain, she would’ve almost sworn the driver never got out. Now, she wanted to know why he was there.

Am I paranoid or what?

She meandered to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine. She needed to think—and relax.

Earlier in the day, her mother came over and volunteered to take Maddie for the weekend. Not that Kelly really needed the alone time. She preferred to have something to keep her busy when Cal was traveling, and taking care of Maddie provided the best diversion possible. However, she’d managed to keep herself occupied with examining the pictures Cal sent her.

It didn’t take her long to realize they were fakes. She would never admit to Cal that a tinge of doubt crept into her mind. Yet she almost dismissed the thought as it first came to her. Cal? At a strip club? She chuckled at the thought. He’d probably have no idea what to do.

She was tempted to call Folsom and give him a piece of her mind, but she thought better of it. Let Cal fight his battles. You just need to give him the ammo.

Five minutes sitting down was all she could take before she grabbed her phone and dialed his number again. And again—nothing.

She peered out the window and the car was still there, parked in the same place. Only this time, she saw a flash of something.

What was that?

She turned off the lights and walked up the stairs. If someone was watching, she didn’t want to make them think she was onto them. She turned on the bedroom light and then the bathroom light, both visible from the side of the house. But then she crept into Maddie’s room. Aside from a thin ray of light streaming into the room from the hallway, it was dark. Kelly poked her head above the windowsill, just high enough to glimpse the car. The streetlight illuminated the front license plate numbers, which she typed into her phone.

She slumped down against the wall and called a friend at the FBI. Cal had made plenty of FBI contacts during his investigations, and they proved invaluable during times like this.

“Hey, Harry. This is Kelly Murphy. How are ya?”

“Good, Kelly. To what do I owe the pleasure of this call tonight?”

“I’ve got a tag I want you to run for me.”

He laughed. “Do I look like a website?”

“If I could Google it, I would.”

“Well, all right. If it’s for you, Kelly, I’ll do it.”

“Thanks.”

She gave him the numbers and letters—and waited. In the meantime, she poked her head above the windowsill to check again. Still there.

“You still there?” he asked.

“Yep. What’ve you got?”

“That car is registered to a Collin Langdon Beaumont of Matthews, North Carolina.”

“Great. Thanks, Harry.”

“Anything else I can do for you? You’re not in trouble, are you?”

“Not right now, but that might change. I’ll call you if I need something else.”

“You know where to find me.”

Kelly ended the call. “Collin Beaumont?” A quick web search revealed that Collin Beaumont was J.T. Beaumont’s cousin. Collin raced dirt tracks in North Carolina and all over the South. He was also passed over for a driver gig on one of the lower circuits in favor of J.T. But according to one article she read, J.T. and Collin remained close friends.

What is he doing outside my house?

Without allowing for any plausible explanation, Kelly went to the worst place possible: Collin Beaumont was there to harm her. She began to review the protocol Cal helped establish for her in the event of such an emergency. He created a panic room for her underneath the stairs, equipped with cameras displaying all the rooms in the house. They could even be activated in the dark using infrared mode. It was something Cal did as a safety measure, but Kelly suspected he did it just so they could check on Maddie while she was sleeping—or to see if she was sleeping at all.

She dialed Cal’s number again.

“Come on, come on. Pick up your phone,” she muttered.

Straight to voice mail.

She growled before burying her face in her hands.

“What is going on?”

Kelly spun around and peered through the window again at Collin’s car. It was still there—but he wasn’t.

She jumped up and raced downstairs toward the panic room at the bottom of the stairs. She typed in the code on the keypad and slipped inside. Firing up the monitors, she waited as the TVs came to life and displayed the images in and around the house. Nothing.

Where’d he go?

She called Cal again. “Will you please pick up your phone?”

Nothing.

She texted him. And waited.

Still nothing.

Kelly decided she needed to determine what was happening right outside her house first and put her phone down. She studied the monitors transmitting images of the perimeter of the house.

The man was nowhere to be found.

CHAPTER 37

CAL DROPPED HIS CAR off at the Phoenix airport rental site and boarded a shuttle bus for the airport. He kept his head down and cut his eyes in both directions. While he hadn’t gathered definitive proof, he felt someone was watching him. And he had to lose whoever it was.

Cal decided to resist the urge to join the race to the check-in stand, hoping to shorten the list of potential assailants following him. Instead of a busload, he narrowed it to three men, as everyone else thundered ahead of him to secure their tickets.

One